Whence the 72? The Peisistratus myth and the Letter of Aristeas

Abstract

This article compares a form of the Peisistratus myth in the Scholia to Dionysius Thrax to the basic outline of the translation legend in the Letter of Aristeas. The key to reconstructing the commonalities is the number 72, which was hitherto a crux in the interpretation of the Letter of Aristeas. After outlining the basic narrative in the Letter of Aristeas, the Scholia is presented in translation and the different forms of the Peisistratus myth are discussed, in order to determine the plausibility of the view that roots of this form of the myth were known in Ptolemaic Alexandria and utilized by the author of the Letter of Aristeas. This new appropriation of Homeric scholarship to show the superiority of the transmission and translation of the LXX over the Homeric poems adds considerably to our knowledge of the method of the Letter of Aristeas.